in development
Screenwriter: Andy Poulastides
Genre: Historical drama
In summer of 1940, before the skies of England were abuzz with the Battle of Britain, the single most decisive and divisive action of the war took place in a small harbor off the coast of North Africa, the Royal Navy attacked and destroyed the French Fleet as it lay at its moorings. 2 weeks before the French and British had been allies in the war against Germany.
Only through the understanding and friendship of Captain Holland of the Royal Navy, and Lieutenant Dufay of the Marine Nationale that disaster might have been averted. But events rapidly overtake them, and in the misunderstandings and misjudgments, the increasingly frenzied efforts of the protagonists to avoid disaster and the dreadful inevitability of the end, It was a ‘Greek Tragedy’ killing many French sailors; there was no Glory in this action.
To the French the action was murderous aggression; to the sailors who carried it out seemed incomprehensible folly; to the British government in London it was a grim but unavoidable necessity which galvanized support from the US for Churchill to continue the war, alone if need be.